The Truth About The Soda Machines At South By Southwest

South by Southwest, an annual tech and music conference in Austin
Texas, is in full swing. And there's something funny about soda
machines at the Austin Convention Center, where 40,000 people
have flocked to listen to panels.

They're all Pepsi machines.

But two weeks ago, they were all Coke machines.

What happened? Pepsi is a major South by Southwest advertiser,
and it pays gobs of money to remove all of the Coke machines and
replace them with its own stands all throughout Austin.

A South by Southwest employee tells us Pepsi ran the same
sponsorship last year, and his team started swapping out the soda
machines for Pepsi's campaign last week.

The employee wasn't sure how much Pepsi paid, but he assured us
it was "a ton."

One of the many Pepsi
machines in the Austin Convention Center for
SXSW.Alyson Shontell/Business
Insider